Eliphaz’s third speech
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Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said, 2 📚✭“Can a man be of benefit to God, as a wise man may benefit himself? 3 📚Is it any pleasure to the Almighty if you are righteous? Or would he gain something, if you made your ways perfect? 4 📚✭“Is it because of your fear of God that he rebukes you, that he enters into judgment with you? 5 📚Is not your wickedness great, and your iniquities without limit? 6 📚For you have taken a pledge from your brother for nothing, and stripped the clothing from the naked. 7 📚You have not given water to the weary to drink, and you have withheld bread from the hungry. 8 📚But this mighty man possessed the land, and this honourable man lived in it! 9 📚You have sent widows away empty-handed, and the arms of the fatherless have been broken.10 📚Therefore snares surround you, and sudden terror alarms you,
11 📚Or darkness so that you cannot see, and a flood of waters covers you.
12 📚“Is not God in the heights of heaven? And see how high are the highest stars!
13 📚And you say, ‘What does God know? Can he judge through the dark clouds?
14 📚Thick clouds cover him so that he cannot see, and he walks above the circle of the heavens.’
15 📚✭Will you keep to the old way that wicked men trod,
16 📚Those who were cut down before their time, whose foundations were washed away by a flood?
17 📚They said to God, ‘Leave us! What can the Almighty do for people?’
18 📚Yet it was he who filled their houses with good things. So the counsel of the wicked is far from me.
19 📚“The righteous see all this, and are glad. And the innocent laugh them to scorn, saying,
20 📚‘Surely our enemies✭ are cut off, and fire consumes their remnant.’
21 📚✭Become acquainted with him and be at peace. Good will come to you through that.
22 📚Please receive instruction✭ from his mouth, and store up his words in your heart.
23 📚If you return to the Almighty, you will be built up; you will remove iniquity far from your tents.
24 📚Then you will lay your gold in the dust, and the gold of Ophir among the stones of the brook.
25 📚Yes, the Almighty will be your gold✭, and your choicest silver.
26 📚For then you will delight in the Almighty, and will lift your face up to God.
27 📚You will pray to him, and he will hear you; and you will pay your vows.
28 📚You will decide a thing and it will be established for you. And light will shine on your ways.